


of all my demon spirits (I need you the most)

by thesepossessedbylight



Series: of all my demon spirits (I need you the most) [1]
Category: House of Cards (US TV), The Fall (TV 2013)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 16:41:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11406390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesepossessedbylight/pseuds/thesepossessedbylight
Summary: “What will you tell your daughters, in the future? About how to stay safe?” she asks, not quite daring to look Reed in the eye.“Pretty much what I tell them now,” Reed says. “Don’t talk to strange men.”Stella turns around from where she’s been staring at Sarah’s shoe collection. “Strange men?” she asks, voice fragile, weary.Reed shrugs, glances away. “Any men,” she says. Looks back at Stella with a tiny, wry grimace, and Stella matches it, but behind her exhaustion and grief and rage there’s a tiny spark of hope, and it sustains her, burning deep inside.





	of all my demon spirits (I need you the most)

_The bastard._

It’s all she can think when she gets the call, when she’s told that Spector’s killed himself. 

_The bastard._

She knows it’s his own way of saying that he’s above the law, above any human notions of democratic justice and due punishment. It’s a deeply childish act, the impotent lashing out of a man who would otherwise inevitably be found guilty by a jury of any of his peers, who would be destined to spend the rest of his life in a windowless cell. But she can’t help thinking that it was an act directed at her: _ha ha,_ he seems to be saying, in that deep Irish drawl she’s come to despise. _I fucked you after all. Sweet Stella, sexy Stella._

She swallows the bile that rises up in her throat at the thought, schools her face into calmness, and walks into the psychiatry clinic.

Nobody even tries to interrupt her as she makes her way to Spector’s room. She makes eye contact with no one, glances neither left nor right. It seems oddly important to be in control, now more than usual, and she resists the urge to pick at the cuticles of her nails, one of the few nervous tells she’s ever had, and the one she’s found most difficult to eradicate. She has the power here, she tells herself; he’s dead, and he’ll never kill anyone else again. 

It’s not until she gets to his bare, clinical-looking room and sees his lifeless body, splayed over the floor, that she really understands that he’s dead. Her gaze is drawn to his sightless eyes, his purpled lips, swollen with blood and slick with spittle, and she feels nothing. 

There’s nothing she can do here: Spector is dead, and although the world will be rid of one more sick fuck, Rose, Annie, Sarah, Alice and Fiona will not be granted the public recognition of justice she knows they deserve. She digs the nail of her index finger into the soft skin at the side of her thumbnail, hidden inside her coat pocket. She feels oddly like she failed. 

She stands there for a few long moments, a hunter standing over the body of the hunted, robbed of the chance to swing the axe herself. How she wishes his suicide had failed, how she wishes there would be the possibility of a trial, yet perversely, she’s glad he’s killed himself: Rose would have been called to give evidence, to relive in relentless, public detail the minutae of her imprisonment. She won’t have to do that now, and Stella is relieved, for Rose.

If only she felt relieved for herself. Stella knows there will be paperwork to tidy up, and someone will have to take the blame for Spector’s ability to commit suicide - most likely her, as an outsider and as the previous recipient of Spector’s dubious affections. She can see the headlines in her mind’s eye, and they sicken her: _DI Stella Gibson’s Encounter with Serial Killer: Could His Death Have Been Avoided?_ or _Sources Argue Serial Killer Should Have Been Under Higher Protection._ Stella Gibson Fucked Up, they might as well say.

She squares her shoulders, takes a deliberative breath, and turns her back on Spector’s body, signalling for the crime scene technicians to begin their work. He may continue to haunt the memories of some, but she has work to do. 

She drives to the morgue ahead of Spector’s body: she really has nowhere else to be, and it’s early enough in the morning that she doubts she’ll be able to sleep properly, even if she went back to the hotel. The Belfast roads are deserted, curiously flat, and she fiddles with her iPhone as she’s driving, navigating to the music app and selecting a song at random. 

_There’s a letter on the desktop_

_that I dug out of a drawer…_

She grimaces slightly: the Indigo Girls. _Ghost._ But she doesn’t turn the song off, or fast forward to another, and it continues, nasal and painfully familiar.

_You come regular like seasons_

_Shadowing my dreams…_

Stella sighs. She’d dreamed about Reed a few nights ago. It wasn’t in the journal that Spector had read, so many long weeks ago, and after Reed had rejected her invitation she’d thought that she had been successful in putting her out of her mind, but she turned up again in Stella’s dreams periodically, reminding Stella that whatever it was she and Reed had shared, she wasn’t entirely over it. 

This time Stella hadn’t written the dream down. She thinks sometimes she’ll never write her dreams down again, that habit irreparably tainted by Spector’s ghost, but she thinks she might like to remember this dream. It’s fading fast from her memory, and she remembers less of it each day, but she goes over it sometimes, endeavouring to keep it close. In the dream, she’s lying on a couch, one leg pulled up slightly, her head in Reed’s lap. Their hands are tangled together on Stella’s stomach, and she gazes across the room at a large painting of a woman, rendered in vivid yet dark colours, brick red and browns and blues. It’s tasteful, but there’s a wildness there, a vicious sense of honour and anger behind the calm facade, and Stella feels at home, content. Understood. She turns her gaze to Reed, her dark eyes looking down at Stella, and she’s taken aback by the depth of emotion she reads there: it’s love, pure and simple, the most perfect, complete love Stella has ever felt. It should frighten her - it terrifies her now, when she thinks of it - but in her dream she smiles, feels unconquerable and victorious with this woman and her love, feels like she could do anything if Reed is beside her. 

Stella doesn’t have sex dreams very often; she tries not to be repressed and there’s little need for her sexual impulses to be expressed in her dreams. But she has emotional dreams even less often, although she thinks it’s for the opposite reason: even her subconscious is afraid to tell her that she has emotional needs. But she’s still buoyed by the dream-memory of the love in Reed’s eyes, even days later, and she frowns slightly at the realisation as she pulls into the morgue parking lot. Despite her best intentions her heart rate picks up as she wonders whether Reed will do the autopsy, wonders if she’ll be allowed to stay and watch Reed’s slim fingers at their gruesome work. It’s a terrible feeling, discovering how much you care, knowing there’s nothing you can do.

She enters the morgue like a needle applied to a record: precise, shooting off questions as soon as the doors open. No, she’s told, Spector hasn’t arrived yet, but as soon as he’s deposited they’ll let her know. 

“Who’s likely to do the autopsy?” she asks, voice full of an indifference she barely feels.

The woman behind the desk scratches above her right eyebrow with one fingernail as she flips through some files. “Professor Smith did the autopsies of his victims, didn’t she?” 

“That’s right,” Stella says, and wonders if it’s a good idea to ask Reed to autopsy Spector. 

“In any case, it doesn’t matter,” the woman says, folding her hands above the file and looking at Stella. 

“Why not?” she says, and she dislikes the tone of her voice, high-pitched and anxious. 

“Weren’t you told?” the woman asks, genuinely surprised. “Professor Smith has taken a leave of absence. I’m not sure when she’ll be back.”

Well, damn. 

Stella thanks the woman - Rebecca, she reads off the name tag - and leaves, heart sinking. Spector’s ghost can deal with the ignominy of his autopsy being done without Stella present; she can’t quite summon up the energy to care.

 

 

—+—

 

 

She roars into the quiet cul-de-sac on this gigantic glossy motorcycle, and Stella’s eyes follow her, track her movements as she swings off the seat and lands silently, panther-like, on the ground. Whoever she is, she’s wearing the most exquisite pair of leather pants, and Stella might as well be a magnet, helplessly drawn to her.

“Who is that?” Stella asks, because she can’t _not_ know. 

“That’s Professor Reed Smith,” the crime scene technician replies, and Stella’s already forgotten his name (was she ever told? Probably. She doesn’t care.) because _oh._ Reed Smith. 

“Tell her to join us at the command vehicle,” she says, voice carefully pitched, careless, casual. She walks away, doesn’t look back, and tries not to wonder if the brief moment when their eyes had met had been as electric for Professor Reed as it had been for her, tries not to care if she’s watching her.

The thing is, Stella has excellent self-control. Really, really fantastic, better than most other people she knows. She’s the kind of person who can give up carbs and _not_ find herself at 3am sitting on the kitchen floor, stuffing her face with the weird, sad bread that she finally found, after twenty minutes’ frantic searching, at the back of the freezer. Her self-control is probably the reason she’s where she is today, Acting SIO of a serial killer investigation in Belfast, of all places. So, great. But people have always been her weak point: beautiful, compelling, flawed people. And women who blur the delimitation lines of gender, wrenching masculinity from the hands of the powerful and making it their own, have always caused her breath to stutter and her voice to become gravel in her throat, her want made painfully obvious. 

It’s no different with Reed Smith. 

She walks to the command vehicle with a slight smile on her lips, _knowing_ what she’s going to do next, but unable and unwilling to stop herself. She’s aware that she speaks brusquely to Farrington, aware that she’s harsher than the girl deserves or wants, but she can trust Dani and right now she needs her hotel room presentable. Don’t ask why, Dani, don’t speculate, just _go._ And, God bless her, Dani goes.

 

 

She can barely concentrate through the briefing she’s giving the crime scene technicians - good, honest, hard-working individuals, all of them, and she’s so grateful for their expertise, so glad they know what to look for even if she doesn’t specify everything - because this woman she’s hardly even met is right in front of her, gazing at her with the full force of her dark eyes, and she can feel that liquid gaze like a physical caress.

Burns butts in - because of course he does - and she turns away, resisting the urge to roll her eyes until her back is turned fully towards him. He’s her direct superior, and it's probably not the greatest idea to antagonise him unnecessarily, but _fucking hell_ sometimes she wants to take him down a peg or ten. She’s no idea why she ever found him attractive enough to sleep with him, except that his eyes are still dark and full of that tortured pain she used to like so much. She doesn’t like it so much any more, now she’s realised that pain isn’t poetic, isn’t beautiful in that way which twists a knife deep in your heart and gives you the kind of ache you can luxuriate in. Pain is just… pain. It doesn’t redeem you, and it excuses you from neither petty misdemeanours nor mortal sins, glorifies neither God nor yourself. Sometimes she wishes she’d known that, eight years ago when she slept with Burns.

It’s an experience, working with Reed, moving carefully, gently, around Sarah Kay’s body, prying from her the secrets which might lead them to her killer. Stella looks, takes notes, keeps her eyes and mind and heart fixed firmly on the dead woman in front of her and the architect of that death, whomever he may be. Reed Smith does the same, and quite apart from whatever shimmers between them, tense and luminescent, Stella respects her for it. Their eyes meet over the edges of their masks and their gazes hold, Stella unwilling to look away for long moments until the other crime scene technicians bumble noisily into the room and she snaps back into focus.

 

 

She's accosted by Jimmy Olson on her way out of the crime scene cordon. Reed is on her way to the lab to start the autopsy; Stella is on her way to the lab via the office since she needs to pick up some papers, maybe drown her face in some centre-of-the-sun-hot coffee. It’s been a long day, and Jimmy Olson makes it even longer. 

Maybe she did misread him, she thinks, once she’s slipped into the car, on her way back to the office. Maybe… maybe it’s some kind of cultural barrier, she thinks, grasping wildly at straws, wondering if Belfast men are fundamentally different to London men, wondering if she accidentally got herself into something she didn’t fully understand. 

But it’s not her fault if he didn’t understand the rules of the game, and the multiple dick pics and offers of drinks to which her phone has been subjected in the last twenty-four hours suggest that he badly misread the rules. 

It wasn’t even that great a dick.

The noise of the engine is loud, even inside the car where she’s sitting, and her sigh of frustration goes unheard by the driver, whose eyes are fixed on the road. Nothing seems to be going right since she arrived in this godforsaken town and she doesn’t know how to make it right, doesn’t know what she can do to improve things. For Jimmy Olson, probably nothing would be enough short of a full-blown relationship, and she… she doesn’t _do_ relationships.

Reed’s dark eyes intrude into her imagination, and she closes her eyes, allows herself a brief moment to breathe. If she managed to fuck up Olson so badly, she thinks to herself, she shouldn’t trust herself with Reed. But that liquid gaze, full of promises, swims again before her mind’s eye, and she knows she won’t be able to stop herself.

 

 

—+—

 

 

Stella thanks the cabbie. Shoves the majority of the mail away from the doorway with her foot. Picks up only that which appears important. Makes her way down the hallway, into the dining room, and from there into the kitchen. Switches on the light, pours water in the kettle, switches it on.

_Finally,_ she thinks to herself. She’s pretty sure she’s kept good track of how very tired she’s become, over the last few weeks, but out of nowhere it all crashes down on her and she gasps with the weight of it, a bone-crushing exhaustion that causes her shoulders to slump and her head to bow, bracing herself against the kitchen bench. She stands there for a few long seconds, too tired even to kick her heels off, before she spies a wine bottle standing unopened on the kitchen bench and she roots around in the cupboard for a glass.

She sits down, finally, at the marble-topped table in the kitchen she hasn’t seen for months. It’s quite something, being back in her own space, master of all she surveys, and she can’t say she dislikes it; can’t say it isn’t a relief to be away from the uncertain alliances and oddly threatening undertones she’d discovered in Belfast. London has its fair share of serial killers, and she’s sure that its criminal underbelly is very much alive and well, if not especially pleased to welcome her back, but it’s never had the feeling of visceral, testosterone-fuelled masculine menace that she found so disconcerting about Belfast. She stares into her wineglass, losing herself in the swirling crimson liquid before she takes a sip. She finds herself staring aimlessly into the distance, too tired to sort through the mail that litters the table, too exhausted to rouse herself enough to get to sleep, and as always in this half-awake, half-asleep state, her thoughts turn to Reed.

She hasn’t seen Reed since the crime scene in the woods; if she were particularly self-centred she’d think Reed was deliberately avoiding her, but she’s sure that Reed has just been busy. Mostly sure, anyway. God. Sometimes her mind takes her back to that dream she had, a few days before Spector killed himself, and she melts at the memory of Reed’s eyes and her careful, gentle hands. Stella sometimes wishes she had more gentleness in her life, but intellectually she knows the life of a detective inspector is anything but gentle. Instead, she imagines Reed’s quiet hands winding through her hair like clement rain in spring, the soft feeling of her lips against Reed’s as she raises herself from her position on Reed’s lap and presses her lips to Reed’s, winds her arms about Reed’s shoulders and holds her close, joyful and content. Imagines pressing her lips to Reed’s breasts, cupping them with gentle hands as she licks her way down Reed’s body to her sex - 

Stella comes back to herself with a shudder, raising a shaking hand to her cheeks, surprised to find them wet with tears. What the fuck, she thinks, dazedly, and sculls the rest of her wine, setting the glass back on the table a little unsteadily. She stands up, resolves to put Reed Smith and her perfect lips out of her mind for the rest of tonight, and heads off to bed. As she’s leaving the kitchen, though, her hand brushes gently against the side of her trousers, and she hears a rustle of paper from her pocket. She draws the scrap of paper out and unfolds it. _He that loves not abides in death,_ she reads, and she gazes at it for a few long seconds before crumpling it up and tossing it in to the kitchen dustbin. More of Spector’s self-indulgent pop psychology drivel, she thinks to herself, and Reed’s eyes flash once more into her imagination.

 

 

—+—

 

 

When Reed phones her to ask if she’d visit the crime scene again, her response is instinctive, immediate. No matter that a police officer has just committed suicide metres away from her office; no matter that she’s just spent the last hour talking with Eastwood, calming him down, talking with Burns, who is unable to see beyond his own nose, unable to conceptualise how she feels - or doesn’t feel - about Olson.Burns seems to take it as a personal insult that she’s essentially unshaken by Olson’s death. Burns, who has made their one night together so much more important, more life-changing than it ever really was, and when he tells her that he would have left his wife for her it’s all she can do to stop herself bursting into laughter. It’s his good fortune that he has the sense to apologise, to leave, but it exhausts her, dealing with his expectations, his pitifully poor understanding of her character, and so when Reed calls, she immediately agrees. 

It’s not only her disgust with Burns, she thinks as she drives to the crime scene, music turned down low, a mere background buzz. It’s Reed herself, and she smiles, staring at the road unfolding before her, remembering Reed’s tiny smile, her challenging, assessing gaze.

They move around the house, coordinating their movements like moons orbiting planets, perfect, sublime, exact. Stella thinks she might be the moon, constantly aware of Reed’s movements, stepping around her, beside her, with precision. And Reed is magnetic like a planet, petite in her dark leather jacket with the studs on the shoulders and pockets, with the buckle cinching her already tiny waist even smaller. Stella feels peculiarly fragile beside her; the leather jacket gives her an air of power not necessarily afforded by her tiny frame, and there’s nothing Stella wants more than to open it, to rip apart its constricting zips to gain access to the soft skin underneath, to bring Reed off still wearing it, hanging off her shoulders while Stella licks and sucks and kisses… 

She turns away, clears her throat, starts analysing. 

“From here,” she says with certainty. “She’s at the top of the stairs, he comes out fast, overpowers her.” God, she thinks to herself, staring at the place where it happened. She can almost hear the screams. 

Reed glances at her, and she continues. “So he lifts her, carries her, struggling, into the bedroom,” she says, and she’s got her arms where their killer would have held Sarah Kay, moving in the same way their killer would have. She moves onto the bed, one knee up, at risk of overbalancing but she supposes the killer would be taller, more powerful. “Puts her onto the bed, pins her down,” she says, and she turns over, back flat against the bed where this awful thing happened, moves her arms above her head in a pale mimicry of the terror Sarah Kay must have felt. “Ties her to the bedframe," she says finally, and the simple act of lying here where Sarah took her last breaths strikes her, suddenly, a sense of deep matriarchal rage building up in her gut, and she has to take a few seconds to calm it, to deny her thirst for bloody vengeance.

Reed, bless her, gives her the distraction she needs. “The ligature marks suggest maybe here,” she says, hands gentle around Stella’s wrists, and it cools Stella’s anger, makes the whole situation less frightening. Maybe they’re in this together, Stella thinks as if from a very great distance. Two women, avenging angels against a man’s destructive tantrum, his pitiful lashing out against a world he thinks has wronged him.

“You know,” Stella says after a few minutes, “it’s possible he was in here with her and had her tied up when there were patrol cops at the front door.”

“I didn’t know that,” Reed says, and Stella probably shouldn’t have said anything, knows they’re trying to keep it quiet as much as possible, but she thinks she wants Reed to know just how much of a sick fuck the killer is, wants her to understand the pleasure he probably took from extinguishing this woman’s life while her only possible means of salvation was banging on her front door.

“The answering machine was over there,” Stella replies. “It was set to play messages as they came in. She might even have heard the call.” 

She stands up, moves to the side of the room as she begins to play the message, saved as a media file on her own phone, and out of some reflex for comfort she glances up at Reed. But Reed is gazing right back at her, expression tortured, and she finds herself unable to look away. Thank God Reed understands, she thinks to herself; she couldn’t have done this with a man present, couldn’t have let herself show how shattered she feels. The relief is the only reason she allows herself to say the next thing that comes out of her mouth.

“What will you tell your daughters, in the future? About how to stay safe?” she asks, not quite daring to look Reed in the eye. 

“Pretty much what I tell them now,” Reed says. “Don’t talk to strange men.” 

Stella turns around from where she’s been staring at Sarah’s shoe collection. “Strange men?” she asks, voice fragile, weary.

Reed shrugs, glances away. “Any men,” she says. Looks back at Stella with a tiny, wry grimace, and Stella matches it, but behind her exhaustion and grief and rage there’s a tiny spark of hope, and it sustains her, burning deep inside. 

 

 

—+—

 

 

Stella wakes up at five the day after she arrives back in London. It’s a shock, waking up, staring at the ceiling of her bedroom, which is an off-white plaster stucco instead of the cool, smooth grey of her Belfast hotel room. She turns over, burrows back under the warm covers, knowing she’s not due back at the Met for another week. Closes her eyes, takes a few deep breaths, smiles a little, feeling safe and cocooned in the warmth of her bed. Several minutes pass while she waits once again for sleep. 

She knows she’s sleep deprived, knows the last few weeks in Belfast have taken more out of her than she really had to give, and she desperately wants to rest today at least, but the words on the pound bill that Spector dropped swim into her mind again and she rolls over, staring up at the ceiling as she tries to parse them. _He that loves not abides in death,_ she thinks, forehead crinkling in a frown. She can’t work out if it’s a dig at her or a promise to Katie. As always with Spector, it’s probably a blend of both and neither, the confusion masking his true intention to keep her guessing, keep her continuously wrong-footed. Even after his death he’s capable of making her doubt herself, and she hates it. She sits up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and throwing off the covers with a deep sigh. 

Half an hour later she’s walking through the doors of her swimming pool. Within a few hasty minutes in the changing room, she’s diving into the cool waters of the pool, feeling her body slicing through the water as she begins the process of sluicing away the uncertainty and exhaustion of the last few weeks. She swims until she’s no longer sure of the time, until her arms and back have started a fierce ache, and even then she swims a few more laps until she knows she can swim no more. She grabs on to the end wall of the pool and looks up at the clock suspended on the back wall of the building: 6:30. Time to go. 

She catches a taxi outside the pool and directs the driver to the Met, to the hulking, imperious building in Westminster. It’s a journey she’s taken nearly every day since she started at New Scotland Yard, over a decade earlier, and it should feel familiar, but it doesn’t. It feels awkward, new and depressing and strange, all at once, and she shivers under her wool coat, here in the heat of the taxi.

She walks through the doors of the Met at 7:30 sharp, back iron-rigid under the fall of her coat, one hand in her pocket, the nail of her first finger digging into the flesh of her thumb. She’s surprised how little she recognises the place; it feels almost unreal, hazy, like a half-remembered dream.

She makes it to her desk undetected, feeling like a ghost inside these familiar halls. She takes off her coat, places her bag beside her desk, sits down on her leather chair. Nothing’s been changed since she left, and she supposes she should feel glad, but it only makes her feel depressed. She feels oddly changed by Belfast, touched as if by some revelation from a higher power in whom she's not sure she believes. Or else, she considers, staring at the green leather of her desk cover, she feels touched as if scarred, burned through by something evil. She's still not sure which it is. She wishes she knew; it would make the whole experience marginally more comprehensible, to feel like she knew whether she felt changed by Reed, or by Spector; by a kiss or by the most comprehensive display of evil she's seen in years.

“Ma’am!”

She looks up, and for a moment she thinks it’s Dani, able to focus only on the woman’s bright shock of red hair pinned hastily, clumsily, back. But it’s only Andrea, her second-in-command at the Met, young, capable, and continually solicitous of her welfare, and she can’t quite bear to have the argument with her that she’d have with literally anyone else. 

“Yes, I know,” she says resignedly. “I’m not meant to be here.” 

Andrea pushes herself off the lintel, moving into the room and closing the door behind her. 

“It’s not that, ma’am,” she says quietly. Stella raises an eyebrow at her. “You’ve been through something terrible,” she continues, and Stella can’t deny it.

She sighs. Evidently word has got out about the outcome of the Spector investigation. She was so hoping it wouldn’t. 

“Yes,” she says, gazing at Andrea’s earnest eyes, the hair that reminded her so briefly of Dani. Good, competent, understanding Dani. “I was coming in to check my emails, go over my diary, that’s all.” 

Andrea narrows her eyes at Stella, and Stella’s lips twitch into a tiny smile as she says, “And then I’ll go.” 

“I’ll help you, if you’d like,” Andrea says. 

“No,” Stella says, shaking her head, smoothing her hands over her desk, gazing out over the domain that was once hers, that she will, eventually, have to reclaim. “But thank you.”

 

 

—+—

 

 

“I wanted to say that I’m sorry,” Reed says, one hand on her glass, entire body leaning into Stella, “questioning you about the scratches. I didn’t need to do that.” 

It’s not something Stella anticipates, sitting side by side in the hotel bar with the low piano in the background. She pauses before she replies, muttering in a voice she knows is dismissive but can’t seem to change, “You were just doing your job.”

Reed shakes her head, visible to Stella in her peripheral vision as she stares fixedly at her glass. 

“It was more than that,” Reed says, determined to eke out her share of penance in the wrong place. “It was prying.”

Stella nods, can’t quite bring herself to look at Reed, then forces herself to do so. They lock eyes, and even through her exhaustion and despair and rage Stella knows her pupils are wider than usual, the black swallowing the icy-blue of her irises. She thinks she sees an answering meaning in Reed’s dark eyes, the twisted cast of her lips, and it disarms her enough that she sets her glass back on the table at an awkward angle, so it clatters slightly, the crystal ringing a sharp, quiet note in protest. Stupidly, she blurts out the first thing she can think of.

“I saw Tom on television,” she says, crossing her legs toward Reed. “He did well.” 

“I helped him choose the video clips of Rose,” Reed says, and neither of them can quite bear to catch the other’s gaze now, both stuck in their parallel grooves of guilt.

“I didn’t realise you were so close to the family,” Stella murmurs, and oh - that gets Reed’s attention. 

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“To Tom,” Stella replies, and it’s clear what she’s implying. “You seemed quite comfortable in his company.” 

Reed pauses, seems to take a deliberative breath. When she turns to Stella her shoulders drop noticeably, and she cranes her head a little to catch Stella’s gaze. “Am I being watched?”

Stella doesn’t hesitate to deny the question, mesmerised by the movement of Reed’s lips as she shapes the words.

“But Tom… is?” Reed asks, and that’s not a question Stella can answer, so she breathes in, breathes out, lets her breath edge her closer to Reed like she intends something, like she wishes she could.

Reed’s shoulders, visible under her split-sleeve top, make that odd gesture again, like she’s forcing herself to relax, Stella thinks, or maybe that she knows Stella is safe. It starts a strange, warm feeling in Stella’s belly, like she has final physical proof that Reed trusts her, even though - after what they both did to Rose - Stella’s not sure anyone should trust her again.

“Are the police spying on him?” Reed asks, and that's also not a question Stella can answer. 

“You know as well as I do that the first person the police look at in a case like this is the boyfriend or husband,” she says, in lieu of an actual answer. Reed looks away from her, finally, hand clenching and unclenching on the table by her glass.

“He’s not responsible for Rose going missing,” Reed says, and Stella recognises with a sinking certainty where this is going.

“I know,” she says, reaching once again for her glass, draining it in one nervous gulp. “We are.”

It seems to be the only thing to say, and they sit in a tense silence for several seconds, knees almost touching, until Stella’s phone rings, shattering the quiet. 

She excuses herself, aware that even when she’s off-duty, in this town, on this case, she’s still so very much on the clock. She’s also aware that Reed’s eyes haven’t left her lips in several seconds, although they’re still sitting an acceptable fifteen centimetres apart, and unless she leaves, now, there’s nothing she’d like more than to close the gap and kiss Reed the way she wanted to, back at Sarah Kay’s crime scene. Her attraction to Reed is like a live thing, lurking deep in her belly, liable to flare up if Reed so much as glances at her sideways. It’s a distraction, which Stella is brutally aware she can barely afford, here in this cursed city where so much seems to be going wrong. 

On the other end of the phone line, Mary patches her in to the radio system so she can hear the surveillance reports on the Benedetto girl. Stella uses the time to regulate her breathing, inhaling slowly, calmly, hoping it’ll translate to her shivering nerves. By the time she ends the call she’s made the decision that she’ll keep tonight friendly, strictly platonic. She swears. 

And then, of course, it all goes to hell: she walks back into the bar only to see a man standing in front of their table. 

“Beauty as well as brains,” she hears him say as she approaches, and Reed is glancing behind him, towards her, not scared exactly, but she can read the look in her eyes and it’s weary, exhausted from the continual act of real or pretended availability and pleasure they are forced perform as women, and that’s it. Stella quits thinking entirely. 

“Sorry I’m late,” she says, brushing past the man in a way that - if he chose - could be very rude indeed. She spares no glance for him as she sits down and slides her arm along the top of the booth, her full attention on Reed, who’s still looking at the man, eyes assessing. The moment Reed turns her gaze on Stella, she kisses her, brief, familiar, declamatory. A kiss to make a point.

“Good to see you,” Stella says, voice lower than usual, and if the tips of her fingers brush Reed’s thigh, taut and radiating heat, well, that’ll be a secret between them.

“Nice to see you too,” Reed says, a flicker of amusement in her eyes, and Stella doesn’t quite dare to hope that there’s a flicker of arousal hiding there too. She chances a glance out of her peripheral vision at the man, but he’s still there, still standing like an overgrown, useless penguin beside their table, and so she leans back in, more gently, more softly, pausing one last time before she’s finally, _finally_ kissing Reed properly as their eyes flutter slowly closed.

Reed’s lips are soft, so soft, and she’s tilting her head for better access without really being fully aware of it, maybe, and at this moment Reed’s utter willingness to go along with it, her complete commitment to the kiss, might be the hottest thing Stella’s ever experienced. Except a few seconds later that prize is given to Reed’s long, slow intake of breath, quiet like she’s worried the kiss will end if she’s too loud, and Stella is digging into the soft flesh of her own knee in order not to clasp Reed’s jaw to deepen the kiss further, to slip her tongue between Reed’s open lips, to feel Reed’s tongue against her own… It takes all of Stella’s considerable self-control to make even her breathing before she turns away from Reed casually, like this wasn’t the culmination of everything she’s wanted since she arrived in this godforsaken town. 

“Thanks,” she says, relieved that her voice is as light and calm as usual, that it hasn’t betrayed her desire. 

“I’m… not the waiter,” the man says, his accent so like Spector’s that she’s struck by a sudden realisation that this slow dance of approach, conversation, seduction, was what those girls experienced, Fiona, Alice, Sarah, Annie… Rose? She blinks, hard, against the emotion threatening to well up, gazes steadily at this man who would probably vehemently deny any similarity to Spector, who would dismiss any suggestion of his similarity as the demented ragings of a bitch, a prude, a dyke. It’s nothing Stella hasn’t heard before: she’s been on the force for years, and as a woman, you don’t get to Detective Superintendent without at least a few of your less competent male peers feeling like they should be getting your promotions, but the gendered insults sting in a special way, every time, in a way other insults don’t.

She lifts her chin up, demanding to be seen for who she is. “Why are you standing there, then?” she asks, and the man gets the hint and moves away. In his eyes and set lips, just before he turns his back, she glimpses the kind of patriarchal fury with which Spector is filled to the brim, overflowing, the same all too potent anger seething in this man’s controlled steps. It’s a little victory to have sent this man away, to be curled together with Reed on this seat, her warm thigh burning like a brand against Stella’s trousers, but it’s mitigated by the sobering realisation that all of Spector’s victims would have been approached by him in the same way that this man approached Reed. Not much of a victory, after all, Stella thinks, lost in her thoughts for long moments as rage and fear battle in her heart for dominance.

She can feel Reed’s eyes on her like a physical touch, and eventually she turns her head to catch Reed’s gaze. Her voice is uncharacteristically shaky as she speaks, feeling much the way she felt when she was gazing at Sarah Kay’s shoe cabinet, asking Reed about strange men. 

“That was nice,” she says, eyes leaving Reed’s in order to take a stabilising sip of her new martini.

“Yes it was,” Reed replies, and Reed’s voice is similarly shaky, and it’s that more than anything that reassures Stella: it’s not just her. 

She moves a little closer, sitting flush with Reed, one side of her body alive with Reed’s heat, and it reawakens her desire, vital and urgent like nothing had interrupted. 

“He knows who I am,” Reed says. “I dare say he knows who you are.” 

Thank God, Stella thinks; she’s on firmer ground here, and she takes a sip of her martini, not breaking eye contact with Reed. 

“So what?” she says, pitched low and certain, because she’s never been ashamed of her sexuality, nor her desires either, and right now she wants Reed. 

Reed is silent, but her eyes are dancing, processing Stella’s words, parsing their meaning, and when she puts her martini down and slides a hand between her thighs Stella thinks she understands.

Stella sets her martini down on the table and places her hand in her lap. It’s mostly accidental, but her fingers trail up the side of Reed’s thigh on their way to her lap, light as the morning mist, and Reed’s breath, caught instantly in her throat, is as revealing as if Stella had slid to her knees, right there in the hotel bar.

Stella steals a glimpse of Reed out the corner of her eye. She’s staring at Stella’s lips openly as if she’s forgotten to be careful, for all her earlier cautionary words, and Stella turns into her gaze, lets it embrace her like a physical caress, revels in it. Stella can feel Reed’s breath, puffing unevenly against her lips, and she thinks that if they were any closer they might just spontaneously combust. 

“Come upstairs with me,” she says, the words leaving her mouth in a rush. 

Reed’s eyes flicker, almost imperceptibly, to Stella’s lips. She nods, just once, gaze steady and fixed on Stella, who feels a sudden rush of affection for Reed. She smiles, right hand clasping Reed’s shoulder briefly before she lets go and slides out of her seat. 

 

 

—+—

 

 

When she left Belfast, mere days after Spector’s death and Burns’ resignation, Stella fully intended to put the events of the past months behind her, once and forever. And, she told herself firmly and repetitively, that included Reed. 

“Reed is gone,” she told herself in the car, on the way to Belfast airport. 

“Reed is gone,” she told herself as she swam her nineteenth lap at the swimming pool on her first day back in London. 

“Reed is gone,” she tells herself now, at nine at night, as she’s inches-deep in a pile of paperwork for the Met, months after she arrived back in London. 

Her brain doesn’t believe her. 

She’s working on another possible serial murder case, again, inescapable. She’s inured to most violence, after all these years, but she feels unbalanced, jumpy, in the aftermath of Spector. She’s still unsure why: violence is the daily grist of her work, and no matter how feminist she is she’s long ago come to accept that men’s violence against women is not something she can always resolve or punish, no matter how much she wants to. No, she’s jumpy for some other reason.

She sets her pen down on the green leather of her desk cover, heaving a deep sigh as she reaches for her coffee cup. It’s cold, but that’s ok: her rigorous working habits have led to many coffee cups standing alone and forgotten on her table for hours before she remembers them. The only time she’s regularly drunk hot coffee during an investigation is…

She shakes her head. It’s the Spector investigation, of course, and the only reason her coffee was sometimes hot was because Reed used to call her, ask if she’d like a cup of coffee. She always said yes, no matter how busy she was, and now Stella acknowledges that perhaps she was falling in love with Reed far before they ever kissed. It’s a nice insight, in hindsight: she wishes she’d realised it before she’d kissed Reed, wonders if it might have resolved her seeming-inability to let Reed go. 

“Reed is _gone,_ ” she mutters aloud, as she picks up her pen and gets back to work. 

 

 

A few days later Stella suddenly finds a solution. She’s in one of the Met’s computer labs watching surveillance footage, the lights dimmed and the room silent except for the low hum of the computers. It’s soporific, the walls a Met-regulation grey that bleeds slowly into Stella’s subconsciousness, allowing her to relax for the first time in months. As usual, when her mind is running at anything less than 110%, her thoughts turn to Reed. She remembers how dim the hotel bar was, the polished wood of the table suffused with a golden glow reflected from the lamps placed strategically around the room. It was the last time she felt truly calm, she realises with faint horror.

Then her thoughts jump sideways, and she’s struck with a sudden brainwave: what if, in order to get over Reed, all she needs to do is find someone else? 

It’s the worst idea she’s had in a long time, but it might just work.

Then: “Shit,” she mutters, and rewinds the tape. As the perp on the tape runs jerkily backwards, she smiles to herself, the first genuine smile in months. 

 

 

That night Stella visits one of the last remaining lesbian bars in London. It’s tiny, almost literally a hole in the wall, but she has fond memories here from her university years and it’s familiar, comforting. 

She smiles at the bartender, Meg, who slides a substantial-sized whiskey over towards her. 

“You haven’t been in for a while,” Meg says, flicking her spiky purple hair out of her eyes.

“I’ve been in Belfast,” Stella says.

“No _way_ ,” Meg replies, incredulous. “The Belfast Strangler?”

“Yeah,” Stella says, eyeing the rest of the room. 

“I was sorry to hear that case end the way it did,” Meg says, softer. “He should’ve faced the courts.”

Once again Stella is so grateful to have this space, these women who understand her and know her. She sniffs once, imperceptibly, and Meg puts a hand briefly on her arm before Stella nods and smiles, a little shakily. 

Half an hour later a woman approaches the bar. Stella has been sitting at the bar, drinking her whiskey slowly, feeling the smoky burn slide smoothly down her throat. 

“D’you mind?” the woman asks, and Stella turns to find her pointing at the barstool on Stella’s immediate right. She’s a little taller than Stella, thin but muscular, wearing a fitted grey business dress, blonde hair cropped severely short. 

Stella smiles. “Not at all,” she says, and gestures towards the stool. “What are you having?” 

“G’n T,” the woman says, a bit muffled as she sets her bag on the floor. She shrugs off her jacket, draping it across her lap, and smiles brilliantly at Stella. “Thanks. What’s your name?”

“Stella,” Stella says, extending a hand. 

“Claire,” the other woman says, and her grip is firm and unashamed. “Do you come here often?” 

Meg, in earshot mixing Claire’s drink, snorts audibly, and both women grin. 

“Relatively frequently,” Stella says, as Meg has the grace to look apologetic as she sets Claire’s drink in front of her. “You?” 

“No,” Claire says. “I’m only in town for a conference. I found this place on the internet, thought I’d better check it out.” 

“Probably a good idea,” Stella says, watching openly as Claire takes a gulp of her drink. “I’ve been coming here for years, but lesbian bars are dying out.” 

Claire nods vigorously. “I’m from Washington. I went to a few lesbian bars in the early 90s but I don’t know that there are many left now.”

“What do you do?” Stella asks, smoothing her trousers as Claire’s dark eyes bore into her. 

Claire tilts her head, almost as if she’s assessing Stella. Stella’s not sure if she likes it, but there’s already a pull to Claire, something fascinating, sickly enticing.

“I’m in government,” Claire says, and Stella’s interviewed enough suspects to know that Claire isn’t telling the full truth. It doesn’t matter though, because she thinks they’re here for similar reasons: here to escape, here to be the person they really are, not just the face they present to the world. Stella smiles, and twists herself around a little so her knee brushes briefly against Claire’s. 

Claire turns instantly to gaze at her, and Stella can tell she’s trained herself well in maintaining a blank face, because her widened eyes are evident for merely the briefest flicker before she blinks, relaxing her expression into neutrality.

“What do you do?” Claire asks, and _oh,_ Stella thinks, her voice is edged with the faintest hint of roughness.

“I work for the police,” Stella says.

“Oh,” Claire says, and there’s a definite hint of flirtation even in that tiny syllable. “You’re a policewoman, then.”

“Detective Superintendent,” Stella says, smiling slowly, razor-sharp, and Claire’s mouth twitches, too tiny to be a real smile, but Stella can tell she’s impressed. It’s oddly important that Stella impress this woman, sitting here upright and impeccable, drinking her gin, and she’s eager to keep her talking, almost desperate, and so she asks, “What’s the conference you’re in town for?”

Claire takes a deliberate sip of her gin, setting it down gently on the table before she replies. “You’re in the police, I’m surprised you don’t know. The G20 conference is in town.”

“I’ve been somewhat busy with an investigation,” Stella says, tracing the top of her whiskey glass with the tip of her finger before picking it up and taking another sip. “Serial killers wait for no man - or woman, as the case may be.”

Claire smooths the wispy ends of her fringe out of her eyes. “Playing in the big leagues, I see.”

It’s an oddly revealing comment, Stella thinks, saying more maybe about Claire than about her, and her shoulder grazes Claire’s as she puts the glass down and rests her hand in her lap. Claire is warm and solid beside her, all toned, wiry muscle, and Stella is suddenly desperate to feel those long-fingered hands on her.

There’s a sudden discordant shriek of a guitar being plugged in, and Stella and Claire both jump. They turn around, swivelling on their bar stools so that one of Stella’s knees is tucked between Claire’s legs: a band has been setting up shop in one corner of the bar, a tiny dance floor cleared in front of them, and the guitarist now strums a few experimental chords while the singer clears her throat, head bent away from the microphone

Stella and Claire look back at each other, and there’s a wordless acknowledgement of their own jumpiness in their gaze. Strange, Stella thinks, and then there’s no time left for thinking, because the guitarist begins playing, the singer wrapping her fingers around the microphone, eyes fluttering shut. It looks almost orgasmic, and Stella feels oddly like she’s intruding, before the singer starts singing, voice soft in the low-lit room. 

“There’s a letter on the desktop that I dug out of a drawer,” she sings, and Stella knows this song, knows how it goes, knows what comes next. “The last truce we ever came to, in our adolescent war…” 

There’s a warm hand on her thigh, strong and shockingly gentle, and Stella realises she’d closed her eyes, in defence against the music which cannot possibly mean as much to her as she knows it does. She opens them again to see Claire gazing directly at her.

“Let’s dance,” Claire says, low and certain, and there’s no way Stella is going to refuse.

The dance floor is crowded by the time they drain their glasses and move through the throng. Claire moves not like a dancer, Stella thinks, but like a panther, slow and surefooted and utterly convinced of herself. It’s stunningly attractive, Stella acknowledges to herself as Claire leads them through the crowd to the dance floor, Stella’s hand clasped in Claire’s. For all her self-control, for all her anger, nearly uncontrollable and potentially deadly, that Stella directs obsessively into her work, she senses that Claire is a thousand times more dangerous than she, a thousand times more controlled. It should terrify her. Instead, it turns her on.

As they reach the dance floor the singer is crooning, “And there’s not enough room in this world for my pain, signals cross and love gets lost…” 

Claire pivots, stepping deliberately close to Stella and pulling her into her arms. Her hand is strong against the small of Stella’s back, firm and gentle all at once. They’re close enough that Stella can feel Claire’s breasts against her own, and Stella’s hands float slowly to Claire’s hips, almost without her permission. This close, Claire’s eyes are blue, bright and fiercely intelligent, and her breath puffs against Stella’s lips in regular intervals. Stella feels dizzy, as if she’s stood up too quickly, and she sways forward a little closer into Claire’s ambit. 

“And you kiss me like a lover,” the singer croons, and all Stella can see is Claire’s blue eyes, darkened with lust, so close Stella feels a little cross-eyed, and finally she closes the gap and kisses her. 

Within seconds Claire’s tongue is in Stella’s mouth, searching, taking her pleasure, and one of Stella’s hands makes its way up Claire’s body to grasp her jaw, tilting her head for the best angle. It’s electric, effortless within seconds, and Stella can’t remember the last time it was this good. She pushes a vision of long dark hair out of her mind, and breaks the kiss, only to kiss Claire under the jaw, as they sway to the faint sound of the music. Claire tilts her head back, letting Stella kiss her, and she’s running her hand through Stella’s hair like she’s entranced with the feeling, letting it fall soft and silky through her fingers. After a few seconds she clenches her fingers together, pulling Stella gently away from her.

Stella faces her, hands still wrapped around her. Claire’s eyes are blown wide, iris engulfed entirely by the black pupil. It’s shockingly attractive, and Stella swallows as Claire tracks the movement of her throat.

“Come home with me,” Claire whispers, voice roughened with lust, and Stella feels a sudden surge of arousal at the sound. She nods, once, and Claire grabs her hand, pulling them out of the crowd. 

 

 

‘Home’ turns out to be one of London’s premier hotels. They walk in, Claire’s bodyguard trailing them - because that’s apparently a thing? Claire has a bodyguard, who was making small talk with the bouncer while Claire was in the club, who sprung to attention the moment she walked out, hand in hand with Stella, and Stella didn’t think she could be embarrassed by anything to do with sex but apparently this might just do the trick - and the concierge nearly has a heart attack when he sees them.

“Madame Vi-” he begins, but Claire raises a hand and he stops talking immediately. 

“No, Jacques,” she says, drawing herself up, standing tall and raising a hand imperiously. Stella, standing beside her, thinks it might be one of the most attractive sights she’s seen. “Just Claire will do fine tonight.”

“… Yes, ma’am,” the concierge says, skilfully avoiding using her name. 

“I won’t wish to be disturbed tonight,” Claire says, and he nods quickly.

Claire turns back to Stella, placing her hand on the small of Stella’s back as they begin walking to the elevator. They step inside, Claire and Stella on one side of the lift facing her bodyguard, on the other. Stella is acutely aware of Claire, standing upright and rigid mere centimetres away.

The door _ding!s_ as it opens and Stella thinks, this is it, last chance to back out. There’s a tiny, microscopic part of her that wants to smile, to decline gracefully, citing a cascade of dark hair, dark eyes that belong to someone Stella hasn’t touched in months - but there’s a far bigger part of her that’s fully on board with the idea of sex with Claire, and as they step out of the lift and Claire trails a casual hand down the back of Stella’s arm, Stella squashes any misgivings down far enough they can’t be heard. 

They step inside and Claire turns the light on, illuminating a luxurious suite. The walls are a dark wine-red, as is the brocade bedspread. It looks like blood, dried blood hours or days old, and despite her cultivated, rigid rationalism, Stella shivers. There’s a pile of papers strewn over the little coffee table and as Stella lays her coat over one of the nearby chairs, she glimpses the words, “We intend this trade agreement to be the gold standard of trade agreements for the next fifty years, and provisions such as the new chapter on transparency will…”

“Ignore that,” Claire says from close behind Stella, and Stella can’t quite suppress her jump as she turns to face her.

Stella makes a humming noise in the back of her throat, and Claire’s grin is wide as she wraps one hand around Stella’s jaw, leaning in for another kiss. It’s slow, contemplative, and Stella can’t help but lean into the kiss, sliding her hands to clasp Claire’s hips through her dress. The kiss deepens and Stella begins to feel strangely desperate, hands moving to cup Claire’s breasts. Claire breaks the kiss to gasp, loud in the silent room, and Stella realises with a rush of clarity that tonight, this is where she’s meant to be, this is right, and when Claire says on a harsh intake of breath, “Get it off, take it off,” Stella’s fingers move readily to Claire’s zipper, all her uncertainty gone.

 

 

—+—

 

 

The lift is always slow, but never quite as slow as this, Stella thinks, standing in front of it beside Reed. She feels hyper-aware of Reed, her heat, her perfume, permeating the air, drawing Stella in. 

Stella knows Reed knows about Jimmy Olson. It’s been at the back of her mind all throughout this very strange evening, and she wishes she knew some way to tell Reed that Olson was a mistake, was nothing like this, without making the comparison evident. 

Beside her, Reed takes a breath, harsh and audible in the silence, and edges a little closer to Stella. It’s an endearingly sophomore move, the urge to get as physically close as possible to the other person. Abruptly, the thought almost startling her, Stella wishes that Reed knew that, if she wanted it, this could be more than a one-time thing. It could be so much more, Stella thinks. 

She takes a deep breath, almost ready to say something, but Reed gets there first. 

“Oh God,” she says, and it’s clear she’s terribly nervous. “What am I doing?” 

Stella gazes at her, smiles softly, tries to communicate how very dear Reed is to her with her eyes. “Going with the flow.”

A few seconds pass, as Stella tries to calm her racing heart, then… 

“I can’t,” Reed says, even as she sways closer still to Stella. “I can’t. I was brought up in Croydon.”

As refusals go, it’s certainly one of the worst Stella’s ever heard, and it puzzles her enough that she can’t quite hide her incredulous smile. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks.

Reed shakes her head, eyes still on Stella, filled with such love and regret that Stella abruptly understands how real this has become. Stella’s still facing the elevator, head turned towards Reed, and whatever her lips are saying, Reed is clearly torn, gazing at Stella’s mouth, still nearly close enough to kiss.

“I’m sorry,” she says, nearly a whisper. “I’m sorry.” 

She turns away, Stella standing stock-still where Reed left her, and it’s not the first time Stella’s been turned down but it is the first time she thought she might have wanted it to become anything more than one-time sex, and it’s just alarming enough to throw Stella off, to make her unable to think of anything to say in reply. 

The lift pings, the lift door opens. The hotel door opens, and Reed steps out into the cold night air. She doesn’t look back. Stella steps inside the lift, pushes the button for her floor. As the door closes and she’s taken back to her lonely double bed and whatever fresh horrors might track her dreams tonight, she traces the outline of her lips once, where Reed kissed her so very briefly. 

 

—+—

 

 

Two days later: 

There’s a tobacconist on the way to the pool that Stella passes every morning before her swim. It’s 5:30am and Stella is still half-asleep, so it takes her a few minutes to parse the headline as she idly glances at it as she passes: _VICE-PRESIDENT CLAIRE UNDERWOOD ANNOUNCES NEW TRADE DEAL,_ it says, and she thinks, huh, that’s odd, that woman was Claire too - 

and then she walks back to the tobacconist and takes a good look at the article. _New free trade agreement to be “gold standard” for trade deals for next fifty years_ , says the subtitle, and when Stella finally gets the guts to look at the picture she’s struck with a roiling feeling like a punch to the gut to see Claire’s blue eyes staring out from the newspaper, as she stands at a podium in the middle of a speech, wearing the black dress that Stella watched her put on at 6 yesterday morning. It’s a strange feeling, to be confronted with the fact that you slept with a Vice-President, and Stella can’t help feeling oddly proud - of herself, or Claire, she’s not entirely sure. She buys the paper on a whim, and tucks it under her arm as she walks the last few metres to the swimming pool.

 

 

Sex with Claire seems to have cleared her mind, and Stella throws herself into her work with renewed vigor. She catches the serial killer she was given when she first came back from Belfast; she catches the leader of a child pornography network that’s been run out of a warehouse in north London for the past five years; she takes over a sex trafficking investigation that’s been stalled for the past year and wraps it up within a month. She’s got a year left before she can apply for promotion to Detective Chief Superintendent and she fully intends to make the most of it, getting her solve rate as high as possible. She wants to be the youngest female DCS in the last twenty years and she knows she has a good shot of achieving it. Claire appears in the newspapers, every so often, and when she takes over as President, a silent, bloodless coup without a vote cast, Stella is simultaneously horrified and deeply proud of her. Everything is going brilliantly, and if Stella sometimes goes home to her cool, too-large bed and thinks longingly of Reed’s dark eyes, her slow smile, and the curve of her breasts - well. That’s nobody’s business but Stella’s. 

 

 

 

Months later, Stella is settling in for another long night at the office. It’s just passed 5pm, the evening outside already dark and stormy. Inside the Met offices, the mood is not much better: an electoral fraud investigation has been spectacularly cocked up by an over-eager team of young officers, and Stella has pulled the short straw, is the prospective lucky recipient of days’ worth of overtime to sort the mess out.

“Andrea!” she calls from her desk, and Andrea, her red-haired assistant, puts her head around the door. “Would you get me some dinner, please.”

“Will you be here a while?” Andrea asks, and Stella grimaces in reply.

“Probably,” she says. “It’s the electoral fraud investigation.” 

“Say no more!” Andrea says, with a grimace of her own. “I’ll be back soon.”

Stella smiles at her absentmindedly, mind turning back to her work as soon as Andrea is out the door. She’s spent the entire day with her phone on silent, reading the files for the investigation and if she’s being honest, she’s still no closer to understanding how it could have been so royally fucked up. In comparison, it makes the Spector fuck-up seem like a minor blip. She runs a hand through her hair, disturbing the curls already mostly ruined by a day of frustration and Stella running her hand through her hair. It’s been a long day and she’s looking forward to the fifteen-minute break when she eats her dinner -

The door opens, and Andrea enters, without dinner. 

“What’s going on?” Stella asks, raising one eyebrow.

“I got down to reception,” Andrea says, hands knotted in front of her, “and there was a woman there who said she needed to see you urgently.”

“Who?” Stella asks.

“She said she knew you from the Spector investigation,” Andrea says, and Stella’s mind runs through a litany of the disturbed, the traumatised, and the merely insane. 

“Who?” she asks again, and Andrea looks a little embarrassed. 

“Reed Smith,” she says, and Stella stops dead.

“She’s… outside?” Stella asks, suddenly unable to breathe.

Andrea nods. “Shall I send her in?”

Stella opens her mouth, realises she can’t seem to muster words, and nods.

Andrea slips outside and a few seconds later the door opens again, and Reed walks in.

The first thing Stella notices is that Reed has cut her hair, chopped it off just above shoulder-length. It’s a stunningly good look, and makes her look sharper, in control and utterly polished. It seems that Reed has gone through some massive transformation, much like Stella herself, and it’s that which gives her the courage to stand up, step out from behind her desk, and look Reed in the eye. 

“Hi,” Reed says, a shy smile about her lips. 

“Hi,” Stella replies, and Reed’s eyes are traversing the entirety of her body, feeling like a physical touch, and there’s no reason for Stella to be shy except that nearly the last time she saw this woman she was given a line about Croydon, and the sight of Reed still unbalances her, leaves her fighting for equilibrium. 

The silence stretches between them, a hair’s-breadth away from awkward, and then Reed’s shoulders drop and she says, in a rush, “ _God_ I’ve missed you.” 

It’s enough that Stella can break herself out of her stupor to step forward, wrapping her arms about Reed beneath her winter coat, feeling her solidity and warmth seep through Stella’s bones, and into the angle between shoulder and neck she whispers, “Me too.”

They stand, wrapped in the hug, for long moments before either disentangles, and even when they break apart neither woman moves away very far. Stella can’t seem to stop gazing at Reed, drinking her in like she’s alone in the desert, not an oasis for miles, and deep inside she begins to feel calmer, like she hasn’t for months. 

“What brought you here?” Stella asks, after a while. 

To her surprise, Reed blushes, ducking her head and gazing down at their hands, which have found each other and are tangled together like they never want to be apart. 

“I divorced my husband,” Reed says, softly, to their hands. 

“What!” Stella says, surprised enough to abandon her accustomed reserve.

There’s the beginning of a grin on Reed’s lips and she nods, finding the courage to look directly at Stella. “Plus,” she says, “I’d never liked Croydon very much. I wanted to see what the rest of the world is like.”

Stella gazes at her for a long time, mind working furiously, until Reed starts to feel awkward and glances back at their hands, beginning to disentangle them. 

“Are you sure?” Stella asks in a rush. 

Reed looks up at her in surprise. “Yes,” she says, simply, unashamed. “I told you that ridiculous line about Croydon and it’s not an exaggeration to say that you were the only thing I thought about for weeks afterwards. I couldn’t get you out of my head, no matter how much I wanted to, and it made me realise how ordinary my life was, how bored I was. I wanted something more, and I realised that I’d been bored for years, since nearly the beginning of my marriage. I wanted you then, and - oh Stella - I want you now, more than anything.”

Stella swallows, the sound loud in the quiet room, and she disentangles one hand to stroke Reed’s cheek, softly, like Reed is the most precious thing she’s ever known. Eventually she smiles, eyes clouding with tears of relief and joy, and whispers, “I want you too.” 

After all this time, it’s Reed who leans in and kisses Stella, crowding close like she never wants to be apart, and Stella groans like she’s come home at last, letting go of her fears and commonplace terrors in order to kiss Reed like it’ll never end.

**Author's Note:**

> I accidentally wrote over a thousand words of meta for my notes for this piece, so, uhh... you can find those in part 2 of this series. It discusses my theories about Stella's character, including some pretty fundamental misconceptions I think the fandom has fallen into about her, as well as why I shipped her briefly with Claire Underwood. Hope you enjoy this 11,000 word behemoth as much as I enjoyed writing it! 
> 
> Also: if you're confused about the timeline, vignettes 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 are post-Belfast; vignettes 2, 4, 6 and 8 are during-Belfast.


End file.
